Now that Moving Mind Studios has your attention

Philippa Duchastel de Montrouge, Special to The Gazette04.25.2012

Brandon Calder, Samuel Brisson and Ryan George, photographed Sunday April 15, 2012, are members of Moving Mind Studios, a young, local production team that recently had one of their videos go viral in Montreal.Vincenzo D'Alto
/ The Gazette

Brandon Calder, Samuel Brisson and Ryan George, photographed Sunday April 15, 2012, are members of Moving Mind Studios, a young, local production team that recently had one of their videos go viral in Montreal.Vincenzo D'Alto
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL - The guys from Moving Mind Studio jumped on the recent S--t People Say online trend and in January posted their own version, S--t Guys Don’t Say, on YouTube. First their families, then Facebook friends liked it. Three weeks later, with more than a million views, it was official: their video had gone viral.

“My dad was watching the page view count, constantly refreshing his browser. ‘You’re at this much!’ he would shout out to me. ‘Now you’re at this much! That’s like the city of Victoriaville in an hour,’ ” recounts Samuel Brisson, who along with Ryan George and Brandon Calder make up Moving Mind Studio (MMS), a small media production company in Laval.

With their S--t Guys Don’t Say Out Loud clip comes Internet fame, late-night phone calls from groups of giggling girls, but also the inevitable question about how much money they’ve made.

“It’s all about the clicks,” George says.

Clicking on one of those typical pop-up ads means money for MMS. If an ad runs before the video, then it is basically the number of views that count. On Valentine’s Day, MMS had 26,050 page views and 104 people clicked on the ads. It was the day after their YouTube video hit one million viewers.

“This is not to be regarded as a ‘good day,’ ‘bad day,’ or ‘average day,’ but simply a randomly picked day where we’ve earned something,” Brisson explains. MMS’s take at the end of the day? A total of $19.67. “Which is our fans showing us love and treating us to a few chocolates each for V-Day,” Brisson says with a laugh.

But for MMS, it isn’t all about the money. Sure, they’d love to earn an income that would let them produce their own videos all day. They even have an idea for a web series. For now, they see it as an opportunity; people are suddenly watching their other videos, too.

“It’s a trampoline,” George says.

And, Calder adds, imitating a deer caught in the headlights: “Now we’ve got everyone’s attention. So now we really have to deliver. Spotlight’s on us.”

She notes that ad revenue has doubled in each of the past four years for its 30,000 partners.

The Partner Program was created by YouTube to share advertising revenue. To be accepted as a partner, one must produce original, high-quality videos that do not include any copyrighted material. One must also upload new videos regularly. The partnership is a win-win situation, according to Rozeluk.

“The more we can help them generate revenue from their content, the more great content they can make, which helps them build a larger audience, and brings more people online to watch video, especially on YouTube,” she says.

While the guys from MMS have been approached by YouTube to be made partners, they aren’t quite there yet. Emotionally, that is.

“We have copyrighted material on some early videos, which means we’d have to take them off our YouTube channel. But they’re our start, our roots, so it’s nice to have them,” Brisson says.

Of course, there is a financial incentive to being a partner. Every year, YouTube pays out millions of dollars to people through the Partner Program. Hundreds of people are making more than $100,000 a year, Rozeluk says.

YouTube’s most recent statistics reveal that 4-billion videos are watched every day and that more than a trillion videos were viewed in 2011. However, a rough calculation of the figures YouTube released suggests that fewer than 10 per cent of videos are monetized. And if only hundreds of the more than 30,000 partners make more than $100,000, most are probably not making a living from their YouTube earnings. Included in these top earners are such stars as Justin Bieber, Eminem and Lady Gaga.

Yet some Montrealers have turned their home videos into a huge success. Epic Meal Time got its YouTube debut in October 2010 with a clip of its host, Harley Morenstein, eating a mega-hamburger: six patties and 18 bacon strips. Seeing how popular it was, Morenstein and a few friends filmed him creating and devouring a disgustingly delicious off-the-chart-calories pizza. That clip went viral. Then, so did most of the others they posted.

It only took a few months for the partners to decide that Epic Meal Time was their meal ticket to a new life, allowing them to quit their day jobs. A new video is posted every week and includes a calorie counter that runs alongside the recipe. And every week, every last gram of fat is eaten. In between videos, Epic Meal Time posts on Facebook and tweets. On their website, one can buy T-shirts and book guest appearances.

Making money from YouTube isn’t only about ad revenue. More often, it’s about contacts and contracts. Singers and musicians such as Walk Off the Earth, a band from Ontario, can be noticed and sign a record deal simply from having filmed a version of someone else’s song. (In this case, Gotye’s hit Somebody That I Used to Know.)

Then there’s Justin Bieber. Five years ago, he was a boy uploading home videos of popular songs on YouTube – now he has three of the Top 10 YouTube videos totalling more than a billion views.

“Problem is, you don’t decide what goes viral,” Brisson says with a laugh.

Mostly it’s luck, but once a video starts to get some attention, hard work can help. George is in charge of the social media aspects. It’s all about getting your video out there, he says. About word of mouth. About posting it on websites like Reddit so that others see it and repost it.

“When you’re at 1.9 million views, it’s no longer just your Facebook friends,” George adds.

MMS is realistic about what producing this video means. The more than 2 million hits it has received hasn’t generated contracts yet, Brisson said.

“People aren’t looking at S--t Guys Say and thinking ‘I can have these guys make a corporate video.’ ”

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